Mirian threw herself at one of the men holding Tomas’ leg, trying to knock him off balance. A hand in her hair threw her back. She landed on her side. Cried out as a boot caught her under the ribs, once, twice.
“Three silver emperors for the pelt! That’s what the courier said!”
“Then he has to change, Harn!”
Coughing and crying, Mirian rolled up onto her hands and knees.
“I don’t fancy that!”
“Let him change! We kill him and takes his pelt!”
“No, no, I heard the stories! We let him change, we all die.”
“He don’t need to change!” Harn dropped to one knee and dragged Tomas’ head up. Blood from his nose ran down over his lips and teeth. “This here, it ain’t hair. It’s fur. And the courier says it’s good enough!”
Harn waved a knife, the blade long and thin.
“Kill ’em quick, Harn!”
“Kill him?” The big man laughed. “Maybe after!”
Pain stabbing up under her ribs, Mirian didn’t have breath enough to scream.
If you can light a candle…
Reiter had just swallowed his last mouthful of toasted bread when the screaming started. Unwilling to spend the morning kicking around the garrison, he’d gone back into the city just after dawn looking for an alehouse one of the other officers had mentioned enjoying down in the working class part of town. “Safe enough,” he’d said. “We haven’t changed their lives any. At their pay grade, it’s all pretty much shit. Why should they care which bastards they work for?”
In the older cities of the empire, Reiter would have gone to a coffee house. If such a place existed in Abyek, he wouldn’t be able to afford it, given the prices of the commonplace out by the new border. Fortunately, he had no problem settling for ale and was pleasantly surprised to find he could have a mug of tea so strong it nearly ate the plating off the spoon. In spite of speaking no Pyrahn and the waiter no Imperial, they’d managed to find enough common ground for him to order and negotiate a price in Imperial coin. Commerce always found a way.
The eggs had been just the way he liked, the sausage a little short of actual meat but still tasty, and if he couldn’t get a decent biscuit and gravy, he was reasonably content with the thick slices of toasted bread that replaced that staple in this part of the world. The meal had cost more than he’d normally put down—one way or another that could be tracked back to the war—but his back pay had caught up to him in Abyek and he had nothing else to drop it on. As he cut and chewed and swallowed, he tried not to think of it as a last meal. He wasn’t particularly successful. He didn’t need to be one of Colonel Korshan’s company, smart enough to invent rockets and balloons and whatnot, to know he’d be lucky to survive reporting back without the sixth mage. A smarter man might think about deserting, but he’d given the army his entire adult life; if he couldn’t believe they’d give him back a fair chance to be heard, then he’d thrown that life away. Besides, the Soothsayers had tossed him into this pile of shit. There was nothing that said they wouldn’t find him if he ran, and that made reporting his failure the smarter thing to do.
Although, he allowed, spreading honey on a fourth slice of toasted bread, that didn’t mean he was in a hurry to get it done.
At the first scream, he put his knife and fork down on his empty plate. At the second, he stood, and threw a handful of coin on the table. As three, four, and five heralded a rush of noise blending terror and rage under what sounded like explosions, he ran for the door. People out on the street stared toward the rising smoke, but they’d just lost a war and had learned better than to run toward a battle.
Reiter had been on the winning side.
Three streets down, a new sound had him glance left, and he spotted half a dozen young soldiers coming out of an alehouse somewhat shabbier than one he’d just left.
“Corporal!”
The corporal jerked around to face him, his expression as much guilty as startled. “Sir!”
“With me!” Reiter didn’t give a crap what the corporal or his friends were guilty of. They were there.
“We’re off duty, sir.”
“Did I ask?”
“No, sir!”
He heard their boots hitting the cobblestones behind him, but he didn’t look back. If he’d needed to look back, the Imperial army had no business winning so much as a darts tournament.
The road spilled him out into a small market square although he had to shove his way through a small huddle of weeping civilians to actually enter it.
A man burned in the center of the square. Reiter had seen more war than he cared to remember, and men were too wet to burn like man-shaped torches—although as this man was burning like a man-shaped torch, Reiter found himself grateful for the presence of the unnatural, masking flame.
Behind the burning man, the well shot a pillar of water up into the air.
Barrows and stalls had collapsed. Every piece of board in the market had grown thorns.
What looked like a small cyclone had just reached the square from one of the narrow side streets.
Whatever was happening, it was centered around the well.
He’d nearly reached it, one arm up over his nose to block the stink, when he recognized a familiar spill of gray skirts. Up on her knees, one hand pressed to her side, she crawled toward a body lying near the feet of the burning man.
Young, dark-haired, male—probably the beastman who’d helped her escape. The abomination. Ignoring for the moment that they were in Abyek, because that made no sense at all, Reiter added up the pieces. Seemed a local tough had tried to collect the emperor’s bounty on abominations and had tossed the girl aside as harmless because she had no mage sign in her eyes.
Screaming grew louder all around the market as the cyclone came out from between the buildings and began flinging debris.
Reiter grabbed the girl by the back of the jacket, hauled her up onto her feet, and punched her as hard as he could. Her head snapped back, and he barely caught her before she hit the ground. He’d just had his career, and possibly his life, handed back to him.
The cyclone vanished, white-painted bricks clattered down onto the cobblestones. A piece of charred meat shaped like a man stood for a moment then collapsed and sizzled. The pillar of water pouring from the well dropped to barely six inches high.
“Sir?”
Straightening, he handed the girl into the arms of a large young private staring wild-eyed at the destruction. “Get her back to the garrison. Tell them they’re to use that stuff the surgeons use to keep her out. Captain Reiter’s orders.” He was a Shield. Anyone who could read insignia had known he was there on the emperor’s command. His orders would be obeyed. “Take him, too!” The beastman wasn’t in pieces. If the stories were true, that meant he was still alive. “Find a barrow that’s not been destroyed, pile them both into it. Get them to the garrison, quickly, and keep them both unconscious.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Corporal!”
“Captain Reiter, sir!” The state of the corporal’s boots declared he’d already lost his breakfast.
Given the smell of burned meat and hair and offal that coated nose and throat, Reiter didn’t blame him. Not as long as he followed orders. “Until more troops arrive, we’re it.”
“Sir! We don’t have our weapons!”
“We won’t be shooting anyone. You know how to put together a work party?”
Indignation took a shot at replacing horror. “Yes, sir!”
“So put one together. Get people out from under collapsed stalls. Find casualties. Apply field dressings. Can you talk to them?”
“A little, sir!”